Ministers have announced plans to reduce the number of dangerous medication
errors using a £260 million fund for the NHS to go fully digital.

Ministers have announced plans to reduce the number of dangerous medication errors using a £260 million fund for the NHS to go fully digital.

An electronic prescribing system will be part of an overall plan for hospitals and GP services to use technology to improve patient safety.

Figures show that blunders are made in almost one in ten prescriptions issued in hospitals. Studies have found such errors could be reduced by half using technology which transmits requests directly from doctors to pharmacies.

The funding is intended to help the NHS go fully digital by 2018, meaning all scans, X-rays and notes are secured on computer systems, with prescriptions issued electronically, and all patients records available online by 2015.

Earlier this week, a report by Macmillan Cancer disclosed that more than 10,000 cancer patients receive the wrong drugs each year.

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Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, recently revealed that 11 people died in the NHS in England last year after being given the wrong medication.

Yesterday he said the plans would protect patients.

“This fund will allow doctors and nurses to make the NHS safer by harnessing the very latest technology," he said.

“In many places, right now, a paramedic picking up a frail elderly woman who has had a fall will not always know she has dementia, because he or she cannot access her notes. Or a doctor is prescribing the wrong drugs, because they don’t know what drugs their patient is already on.”

Professor Sir Bruce Keogh, medical director of NHS England, said: “Supporting hospitals to replace outdated paper systems for notes and prescriptions will help relieve patients’ frustration at having to repeat their medical and medication history over and over again, often in the same hospital, because their records aren’t available."